


A Light At The End, The Sun In Your Eyes

by shellfishDimes



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Choking, Crisis of Faith, Light Masochism, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 14:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10923282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellfishDimes/pseuds/shellfishDimes
Summary: "I wish for purpose. And for answers." The words slip out of him easily. "He has given me neither." He brings Ephrim's unresisting hands to his mouth and presses his lips against his knuckles. "You have given me both."





	A Light At The End, The Sun In Your Eyes

"Do you fear you'll ever lose His light?" 

It's late at night when Hadrian finally has the courage to ask the question. But then again, it has been late at night for a long time.

Ephrim sits with his knees tucked close to his chest. His face seems impassive and cold. Mere hours ago, Hadrian watched him threaten a man with violence wearing a very similar expression. Like everything he saw before him was inconsequential. 

Ephrim sighs, and closes his eyes, and some of that harshness vanishes from his face. He extends an arm towards Hadrian, elbow resting on knee, wrist slack like the stem of a flower. Flame blooms in the palm of his hand.

"It's always with me," he says, and Hadrian thinks he hears a wistful note in his voice.

The flame flickers in a breeze Hadrian doesn't feel, highlighting the features of Ephrim's face with soft shadows: his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the straight slope of his nose. He looks tired. "Does it hurt?" asks Hadrian.

"It doesn't hurt me." 

"Would it hurt me?"

Ephrim closes his hand into a fist, and the fire is snuffed out. "Yes," he says, curtly.

"What if I wanted it to?"

One of Ephrim's eyebrows twitches as he says, "What's troubling you? You know you can tell me."

"I— I have been trying to pray to Samothes, hoping for a sign," says Hadrian. "But all I've been getting are echoes and shadows, where I used to see light and hear song." He doesn't notice he's rubbing the ring around his neck with his fingers until he sees Ephrim's eyes drawn to it.

"I see," says Ephrim. He seems to think on it for a moment, and then he shifts so that he's kneeling in front of Hadrian. He extends both his hands towards Hadrian, bare palms up. "We can pray together."

Hadrian places his hands in Ephrim's, and feels immediate warmth course through him, from his fingertips to the frost-tipped toes of his boots. His eyes fall closed almost of their own volition.

"Why would you want me to hurt you?" Ephrim says, softly.

The cloak weighs heavy around Hadrian's shoulders. The heat is suddenly stifling. "I just— I have never felt this close, or this far away from Him at the same time." Ephrim's hands are smaller and softer than his. The hands of a prince.

"Hadrian," Ephrim says. It's a command. And so Hadrian opens his eyes.

He reaches out to Samothes. The chain around his neck, the ring of his Lord that always rests just above his heart, pulls him forward with a surety he lacks.

"Tell me what you wish." Ephrim's eyes are like embers. Their light shifts something in Hadrian's soul, banishes a shadow that he didn't feel had been there. And all within him is light, a meadow at midday where previously there was a desert at night, cold and coarse.

"I wish for purpose. And for answers." The words slip out of him easily. "He has given me neither." He brings Ephrim's unresisting hands to his mouth and presses his lips against his knuckles. "You have given me both."

He lets Ephrim's hands slip from his, and bows his head. He feels Ephrim's palms on the side of his face, and then his lips on his forehead, dry and warm. Ephrim lingers there, and Hadrian sinks against him, cheek brushing his fur collar, nose against his throat.

Fingers stroke his hair, and fingers brush across the greys at his temples, and Ephrim's thumb traces the harsh line of Hadrian's mouth, and with one stroke, it softens. He can feel Ephrim's throat move as he swallows spit.

When Hadrian kisses Ephrim, it's the closest to their god he has ever felt.

Ephrim's fingers dapple his skin like flecks of sunlight — at his hands, around his wrists, along his collarbone, around his neck. Hadrian pulls him closer, his cape covering them like altar cloth. Ephrim's fingers dig into his neck, dig the chain into his flesh.

Hadrian's ring — Samothes' ring — presses against both their chests, and Hadrian can feel it against his skin like a burning brand.

He wrenches a sigh from Ephrim's lips when he tugs him onto his lap. Ephrim's hair licks the side of his face, flames dancing in snow, as he bows his head to kiss the line of Hadrian's throat, mouth on his pulse.

Ephrim swallows Hadrian's groans with his mouth, and his tongue gives him life even as his fingers around Hadrian's throat rob him of his breath.

Hadrian says nothing — nothing except the noises Ephrim wrests from him with his lips and his hands — but every line of his body is sincere and pleading, a silent invocation. And Ephrim answers it.

He holds onto him as Hadrian enters him, thighs around hips, arms around Hadrian's neck. He whispers something in Hadrian's ear as they move, and it feels like vindication, and it sounds like absolution.

Ephrim bites on his lip when he comes, and Hadrian has never seen Samothes create anything more beautiful.

When Ephrim moves his hand from Hadrian's chest, it leaves behind a red handprint, like a burn just above Hadrian's heart. And for the first time in a long time, Hadrian feels peace.

And when he looks into Ephrim's eyes, he can see the sun again.

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to everyone for creating ephrim choking hadrian at the same time. you know who you are.


End file.
